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I have no business writing anything about Americans who are currently in their teens and early 20s. Nobody does, except maybe their parents. And yet... journalists, marketing consultants, and pop demographers alike have long been fascinated by the ethical, sweet-natured, hard-working, thrifty, and public-spirited Millennials. So here's my take on this admirable generation. Millennial readers, I hope to hear from you.

Please credit Brainiac/Joshua Glenn whenever you use this guide. Got a beef with my periodization, or different generational name suggestions? Leave a comment on this post or email me. Born between 1954 and 1993 and still unsure about whether you're a Boomer, Xer, Yer, or Millennial? Here's a handy guide.

***

WHO ARE THE MILLENNIALS?

Accounts differ! Like the PCers, who were lumped in with younger OGXers and called "twentysomethings," then lumped in with older Netters and called "Generation X," Millennials are -- pop-demographically speaking -- an overdetermined generation.

According to the consumer research outfit Iconoculture, for example, Millennials are those Americans who were 29 and under in 2007; this suggests that the first Millennials were born in 1978. Newsweek, meanwhile, has described the Millennials as those Americans born between 1977 and 1994. And The New York Times, which prefers the term "Generation Y," when describing non-Xers, can't decide: Yers are "the young people between 10 and 24 who are the children of baby boomers," according to a 2000 story in that paper; this suggests that Yers were born from 1976-90. But a Times story published the previous year described Yers as having been born from 1978-98; while another 1999 Times story agreed that Yers were "born mostly in the 1980s and 1990s." All of these accounts mistakenly lump younger Netters (1974-83) in with older Millennials. So forget what you've heard about Generation Y; there's no such thing.

Do Millennials exist, then? Yes, and for once the influential pop demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss almost got something exactly right. In their 2000 bestseller "Millennials Rising," they claimed that Millennials were born in or after 1982. (They had to pick 1982, in order to have the first-born Millennials graduate in the year 2000; see how cheesy these guys are?) In fact, Millennials were born between 1984 and 1993; this year (2008), the oldest of them will turn 24, and the youngest 15. They're in middle school, high school, and college; their adult accomplishments are nil. And yet we've heard a lot about their collective character, already. But first, let's survey the data, shall we?

Millennials have come of age during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. The September 11, 2001 attacks preceded the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. The New Economy boomed and went bust. Broadband Internet, mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, email, and the management of one's social life via networking software ceased to be luxuries and became necessities for younger Americans.

Millennial pop stars and rock bands include: Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Avril Lavigne, Ashlee Simpson, Chris Brown, T-Pain, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco; from England, meanwhile, hail Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, and Kate Nash. Starting in 2006, tween pop acts like the Jonas Brothers started to enter the mainstream from Radio Disney; however, during the 2000s, hip hop surpassed rock as the most popular musical genre with American youth. Blockbuster movies have included: "The Lord of the Rings" series, the "Harry Potter" series, and computer-animated films such as "Shrek" and "The Incredibles." Videogames like "Guitar Hero," "Rockband," "Grand Theft Auto," "Halo," and "Madden" dominated. Downloading ringtones became a multibillion-dollar business.

The Jonas Brothers with Avril Lavigne

I'm sure I'm leaving out one or two things, but let's move on. Who are the Millennials?

THEY'RE GOOD KIDS

Millennials aren't good kids. They're terrific kids. By all accounts, they're trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. If their elders are to be believed, Millennials are throwbacks to the idealized youth one saw in movies and on TV in the Fifties; they're a hipper (though not edgier) real-life version of the Mouseketeers, the Hardy Boys, or the children on "Father's Knows Best," "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet," and "Leave It To Beaver."

Is all this just their parents' fantasy? If so, it's a fantasy that appeals to youth, too: You've seen Millennial actors portraying midcentury teens and children in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," while the "Harry Potter" and "Lemony Snicket" movies might as well have been filmed in the Fifties. Also: In the 2007 version of "Nancy Drew," Emma Roberts plays Nancy as a Fifties-type adolescent heroine who finds herself in the new millennium... and doesn't approve of what her elders have done with the place.

A Millennial plays Nancy Drew

Why shouldn't Millennials be good kids? Their awesome Boomer and OGXer parents were and are obsessed with "parenting." Throughout their formative years, Millennials' moms tirelessly carpooled them to practices and games, not to mention the community service projects that became para-mandatory for American youth around that time. In the early 2000s, college administrators began to complain about "helicopter parents," who stay in close touch with Millennial undergrads via cellphone, visit campus every weekend, and run interference for them with the administration. ("Black Hawks" is what we call those those parents who cross the line -- for example, by writing their children's college application essays for them.) Last year, USA Today reported that the parents of older Millennials have even taken to calling businesses to negotiate internships and jobs on behalf of their children.

In addition to acting as their kids' HR department, the Millennials' parents never tire of doing PR on their progeny's behalf. "Meet the Millennials, and rejoice," wrote Anna Quindlen in the millennial (January 1, 2000) issue of Newsweek. "My three are simply better than I was at their age," she kvelled. "They are more interesting, more confident, less hidebound and uptight, better educated, more creative and, in some essential fashion, unafraid." Howe and Strauss went farther, claiming that the Millennials "are on track to become a powerhouse generation, full of technology planners, community shapers, instition builders, and world leaders... Indeed, Millennials have a solid chance to become America's next great generation." High praise indeed, coming from Boomers.

Michael Cera on "Arrested Development"

My favorite Millennial actor is Michael Cera, from "Arrested Development," "Superbad," and "Juno." He's perfected the art of pushing the good-kid stereotype to its limit (on "Arrested Development," he'd study math behind his father's back), thereby revealing it as an absurd ideal. Why should we want young Americans to be so damn good?

Isn't it weird that Millennials remain so close to their parents, throughout adolescence, teenagedom, and young adulthood? I certainly think so -- but then, my own (Anti-Anti-Utopian) parents, though exemplary as far as I'm concerned, were never this attentive. They seemed to have better things to do than drive me to soccer (or anywhere else), or do my laundry when I was in college. So what do I know? Maybe I'm just jealous.

THEY'RE LITTLE ADULTS

Speaking of the Greatest Generation New Gods, one hears that Millennials subscribe to an ideology that has been dubbed the New Propriety; it emphasizes Fifties-style values like security, stability, and family. In 1999, the neoconservative author Wendy Shalit tried to sell this sort of thing to her Netter peers, but her book "A Return to Modesty" was only read by disapproving Boomer feminists. Shalit fell off the radar for a while, but now she's back, pitching the New Propriety to Millennials: In 2005, she founded Modesty Zone, an online community for "good girls in hiding"; and last year she published a new book, "Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect." Hey, one more try can't hurt, right?

Adolescents of the previous few generations were either prematurely grown-up (cynical OGXer Brat Packers, hyper-articulate Netters), or else they refused ever to stop being adolescents ("rejuvenile" PCers). Millennial adolescents were and are something new: "tweens." A portmanteau of "between" and "teen" adopted in the Nineties by marketers, the term refers to children between the ages of 8 and 14 who demand (and are granted) the privileges of teendom without its responsibilities or anxieties. They own cellphones, video games, and iPods; they have access to the Internet and email, and they shop online. Never has this age group exercised so much influence over a family's purchases.

''The message this group is receiving is that the country is in great shape,'' the director of syndicated research for Teen-Age Research Unlimited told the Times in 1998. "The economy is not an issue for their parents, so therefore it is not an issue for them. They are not being told no as much as Generation X was.'' That same year, Charles McGrath wrote an essay that accompanied a Times Magazine photo essay about America's 13-year-olds (born in 1984-85, and therefore the first Millennials). "These kids are still recognizably children, even as they are also premature grown-ups," according to McGrath. "Sometimes they're both at once -- children trying to act grown-up -- and sometimes you sense a younger self clinging forlornly to an older one."

This talk of premature sophistication raises a red flag. Are female Millennials a bunch of sexed-up Lolitas? Doesn't seem that way. Though casting agents may have forced some of the first-born Millennials -- Scarlett Johansson, Mischa Barton -- into the sexed-up mold of their immediate elders (e.g., Natalie Portman and Anna Paquin), for the most part teenage Millennial starlets seem no more sexed-up than, er, Annette Funicello was. Which is to say, their sexiness appears wholesome and... mild, as Wendy Shalit puts it. One thinks, for example, of wholesome yet incredibly successful gals like Hilary Duff, Amanda Bynes, Miley Cyrus, even (as far as I know) the Olsen Twins.

Millennial starlets

THEY'RE DISNEYFIED

All this talk of Annette Funicello and Disney reminds me that "Disneyfied" is -- to those of us who grew up in the years between Walt's death and, say, Jeffrey Katzenberg's departure as studio head at Disney (i.e., 1967-94) -- an insult. Millennials have come of age in an era during which Disneyfication, the process of appropriating a fairy tale or national culture or real-world locale and repackaging it in a sanitized and commodified (I'm trying to say: lame) format, spread beyond the confines of Disney's studio and theme parks into what was once known as the real world. In the 1980s, Jean Baudrillard was fond of using Disneyland as an example of a simulation that had come to "precede" (trump) that which it simulated, i.e., America. And in 1992, a coalition of city government and local businesses started sanitizing that city's Times Square by driving out the peepshows and squeegee men, and installing a flagship Disney Store, among other wholesome attractions palatable to the fannypacker crowd, in their place.

Miley Cyrus and friend

Beginning in 1984, the very year that the first Millennial was born, Disney -- which had fallen out of favor with the Millennials' elders -- began to regain its Fifties-style grip on the imaginations of American children. The Disney Channel was launched in 1983, and the following year it debuted programs that have forever warped the minds of Millennials (and younger Netters). The sitcom-cum-music-video "Kids Incorporated" gave the world Fergie and Jennifer Love Hewitt; and "The All-New Mickey Mouse Club" gave us Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake. These Netters haven't turned out so squeaky clean, but who could possibly complain about the adorable stars of Disney Channel shows like "Even Stevens" (Christy Carlson Romano and Shia LaBeouf), "Lizzie McGuire" (Hilary Duff), "That's So Raven" (Raven-Symoné), "Hannah Montana" (Miley Cyrus), "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Cole and Dylan Sprouse), not to mention the Disney Channel Original Movie "High School Musical" (Zac Efron, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale)? Nickelodeon also launched a few Millennial celebrities, thanks to "Drake & Josh" (Drake Bell and Josh Peck), "The Amanda Show" (Amanda Bynes), and "Zoey 101" (Jamie Lynn Spears).

A note on "High School Musical": It's a remake of "Grease," which was set in the Fifties. But "Grease" (I can't believe I'm writing this) was edgy; at least, in comparison. Sure, "High School Musical" is multicultural in a no-big-deal way. But there are no greasers! The greaser worldview -- opposed to jocks and grinds alike -- is nowhere in evidence.

Hilary Duff

No one has worked harder than Disney to encourage American adolescent girls to fantasize about being princesses; this is old news. But has any generation of adolescent and teen actresses had so many opportunities to portray princesses? I'm thinking of Lindsay Lohan ("Lifesize," in which a princess doll comes to life), Kiera Knightley ("Princess of Thieves," "King Arthur," plus every other role), Mandy Moore (supporting role in "The Princess Diaries"), Hilary Duff ("A Cinderella Story," plus she's sort of a princess in "Material Girls" and "The Lizzie McGuire Movie"), Amanda Bynes ("What A Girl Wants," also sort of a princess), Scarlett Johansson ("The Other Boleyn Girl"), and Michelle Trachtenberg ("Ice Princess"). Plus India Oxenberg on the reality show "I Married a Princess." The princess thing is bigger than that, though. Globe film critic Ty Burr, father of 11- and 13-year-old daughters, recently pointed out that

the most successful TV shows aimed at young girls today push the personal-celebrity meme with a vengeance: Nickelodeon's "iCarly" is about a schoolgirl with a globally popular website, and in the omnipresent, omnipotent "Hannah Montana," Miley Cyrus plays an average kid by day who's a rock 'n' roll superstar by night. For millions of tweenage girls singing into their hairbrushes in front of mirrors, this isn't fantasy - it's their inner lives sold like shirts at Delia's.

The cast of "Bratz" (2007)

Of course, Netters have also been called a Disneyfied generation. Comparing younger Netters to adolescents of the Fifties in a much-discussed 1997 New York Times trend piece about Generation Y, Linda Lee wrote that "idoldom itself has moved front and center in the culture, in a way not seen since the youthquake triggered by the baby boom in the '50s and '60s." "At the core of pop culture these days we find Mentos, 'Goosebumps,' and Hanson," Douglas Coupland told Lee -- which is to say, unlike OGXers and PCers, Gen Yers seemed like shiny, happy people.

But there's no such thing as Generation Y, as a 15-year-old reader explained to the Times in a follow-up letter. "The people you described remind me not of myself, but of my 10-year-old sister.... I have never eaten a Mento, nor have I ever read a Goosebumps book. And I would turn off a Hanson CD faster than you can say 'MMMbop.'" Never mind that he misunderstood the "Mentos" putdown (Coupland was surely referring to the hip-yet-edgeless Mentos commercials, not the candy itself), this kid was right on target. His sister, born in 1987, is a Millennial; he is a Netter. Although Netters are better adjusted than PCers or OGXers, they didn't have their rough edges smoothed out. Millennials, though... Well, we PCers and Netters long to rough them up, it seems. Isn't that the heart-warming premise of "The School of Rock"?

A PCer tries to corrupt some Millennials; but they straighten him out

***

Let's leave it at that, for now. Meet the Millennials! Please note that late-born Millennials are still adolescents; there aren't very many celebrities among them, yet.

Gertrude Stein coined the term "Lost Generation" to refer to those American litterateurs -- Hemingway (b. 1899), Fitzgerald (1896), Pound (1885), Eliot (1888), Sherwood Anderson (1876), Waldo Peirce (1884), Sylvia Beach (1887), and Stein (1874) herself -- who lived in Paris between the end of World War I and beginning of the Depression.

Assuming that my periodization scheme works in the 19th century (I haven't researched this possibility yet), Stein and Anderson were members of a generation born 1874-83; Pound, Eliot, Peirce, and Beach were members of a younger generation, born 1884-93; while Hemingway and Fitzgerald were members of an even younger generation, born 1894-1903. So the Lost Generation wasn't actually a generation.

However, we have lost a few American generations: the OGXers were thought to be part of the Boomers for a long time; PCers and OGXers were lumped together and called "twentysomethings"; PCers and Netters were lumped together and called "Gen X"; and then Netters and Millennials were lumped together and called "Gen Y."

Posted by Josh GlennApril 17, 08 01:04 PM

i like bratz and avril.

Posted by marionlovebratzMay 29, 08 10:58 AM

haj i love miley cyreus and bratz baj baj pranvera

Posted by pranveraAugust 3, 08 09:55 AM

I love ur pics

Posted by rosa&leeztteAugust 30, 08 01:20 AM

mandy more

Posted by orlandoOctober 11, 08 01:30 PM

I'm a 1985 baby and I don't associate being in the same generation with anyone born after 1988. According to Wikipedia, people born in 1981-1985 are the MTV Generation, not Millennials or Gen Y. MTV Generation makes a more sense seeing as those of us in or mid 20s were bombarded with music videos and flashy commercials from a young age.

Posted by ekkostarOctober 13, 08 08:48 AM

Ekkostar, those of us born near the cusp of a generation -- you were born in '85, and the Netter/Millennial cusp is 83/84 -- sometimes identify with our older or younger siblings, and not the generation to which we technically belong.

For example, Roy Lichtenstein and Italo Calvino (1923) are technically members of the New Gods generation; but I've called them honorary Postmoderns. George H.W. Bush (1913), meanwhile, is technically a member of the Partisans Generation, but I've called him an honorary New God.

Also, as someone who was in high school in the mid-1980s when MTV came out (and before that, here in Massachusetts, the music video channel V-66), I can't agree with the Wikipedia author who claims that 1981-85 is "the MTV Generation." If anyone deserves that suspect honor, it's the Netters (1974-83). You, Ekkostar, weren't even born when MTV first aired. But obviously you relate more to Netter formative cultural experiences than you do to Millennial stuff... so, ABRA-CADABRA! I officially dub you an honorary member of the Net Generation!

Posted by Joshua GlennNovember 18, 08 08:47 AM

i hate miley cyrus!!

Posted by aquilah zhan'e lawrenceDecember 6, 08 11:39 AM

hillary duff? high school musical? I think you're a little off... you're only refering to pop culture which is effecting those who are 12 now, not 15 - 25. I was born in 89, and none of the things you talk about have any nostalgic value or effected me or my childhood. what about goosebumps and tamagatchis? Kenan & Kel, Clarissa explains it all, Aqua, Coolio? The magic school bus and skip its? Come on!

i love bratz very much... i got their every collection!!! i most love yasmin

Posted by pretty princessJanuary 24, 09 03:51 AM

Hannah Montana

Posted by fullaJanuary 30, 09 11:58 AM

I'm embarrassed to be a part of this generation.

Posted by Felix RamsusMarch 26, 09 07:22 PM

You have struck an imponderable balance between insight and wishful thinking, here. It's true that Disney hacked the machine language of my generation (I was born in 1985), but this has not precipitated a new era of virtue. Quite the opposite. No other age bracket in history has been consulted, polled, monitored by the compound lenses of advertising and market researchers from birth. No other age bracket sees this as a luxury. Our preferences have created our world, and we are no longer required to be attentive. On such hyper-policed cultural turf, massive, massive resources are deployed to make everything as ergonomic, as self expanding, as undemanding as possible. The denizens glide down the tarmac of their private Disney Worlds, and expect everything to be as pre-fab smooth. Politics (Obamamania belied a deep understanding of millenials) popular culture (super hero movies and proseless, warm and fuzzy adventure novels dominate the marketplace) academics (a climate of anti-intellectualism prevails in most university campuses, reinforced by the institutions' profit hungry accommodations) lifestyle choices (facebook is the epitome of our millennial unconsciousness, and unsavoury behavior is engaged in with, in my opinion, less self awareness than ever before- drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex are not matters of much importance)...in every sphere the same lack of introspection prevails. Sex And The City, The OC and Entourage may not feature millennials, but millennials take their lessons to heart. They are certainly no less representative of who we are than Hannah Montana.

Posted by SepulchritudeMay 27, 09 11:46 PM

I think it is a bit misleading to look at today's pop culture for help defining the Millenials. There may be many Millenials on TV and movie screens and on the radio, but the people creating these brands are of the previous generation. And the people who buy into it the most are of the following generation. Hannah Montana, High School Musical, and all the other carefully packaged stuff really says nothing about us. And the bit about how saturated our lives have been with technology is also misinformed. I was born in 1988 and remember a time before iPods, flat screens, and DVDs!

Posted by y2kpanicAugust 12, 09 09:24 PM

I'm a late Netter who works at a University: I see the Millenials come in year after year... and probably due to the sugar-sweet Disneyfication and the relentless parenting they've lived through, they are also characterized to me by the very fake-nice entitlement they exude. They want what they want, immediately, no questions asked, and all hell breaks loose when they can't have it.

Posted by nextbetAugust 13, 09 04:36 PM

Whew... if this is what the Millenials are like, then I thank god i was born one year too late to be accosiated with these people. But.. the Hannah Montanas and Disneyfication is a very deep generalization. I am not a millenial, as previously stated, but i know many millenials, and i have not met one who actually enjoys those things. Mostly, the reason why the millenials (and the members of the next generation, my generation.) seem so mild is that we, are, (at this age) more intelligent than many past generations. (this is not meant as an insult) Also, there still is a dark side, we just hide it better than other generations.

Posted by JohnNovember 17, 09 07:48 PM

My parents were older, most of their friends children were about ten years older than I, netters. I never really saw Disney films as a child, and also never listened to the spice girls or rap. I was a latch key kid, and my parents were always hands off, and I never really did community service untill highschool, which was more for college apps. My grandparent were the younger set of Partisans, and I was very close to them, and they introduced me to the books and music and mentality of that area.

I am in my junior year, and I can't say I relate well to the fresh faces kids or my generation. I mean I am not a druggie of a drunk, although I probably drink more that most (although I notice that there are less heavy drinkers, binge drinking is different, heavy drinking is three to four glasses of scotch, binge is a keg on the week ends, but not a drink at the end of the night the rest of the week).

My mothers side was patrician WASP s, and I think there is always a bit of dysfunction and vice in us. I mean we all have stories of "bad descions" I think we are less different from generation to generation. We dress the same, we are sort of stunted in the hard boiled era. Speaking of which, in many ways, millennials are the opposite of the hardboiled. They are sacron sweet, and incredibly hypocritical. Take fighting, they believe there is no such thing as a fair fight, i.e. MMA vs Boxing. As 18 put it, they can't handle a crisis. Often times the smallest thing, someone cutting their thumb for example lead to my whole floor trying to get the guy in an ambulance. The only one who handled the situation was me. On the other hand they believe they can change the world, that everything is inherintly good, they are not pessimistic or nihilistic at all. They also have a hate of traditional high culture.

They also have a narrow array of experience. While they have taken part in many activities, they are not used to an absence of structure. They lack spontaneity, and have an obsession with moralism. A very artifice moralism, they seem to care less about the real world and more the pre-packaged Disney ideals. They also don't seek a challenge, that is the thing I understand the least. When I hear something is tough, I want to dominate it, and master it. They want to take the easy road, and with the most help. Everything has to have a goal, they never take the journey to take the journey, of do anything because it is there.

For men, they traditional man is somewhat gone. For me this is the biggest difference, I am a traditional man's man, but now a man's man is a metro sexual. At some points it goes to far, i.e. I was conversing, and brought up what someone would do if they girl friend cheating on them with a friend. Most would answer talk the her, and the person who cheated on her. I would just find the guy, and punch him in the face. That is the normal reaction. On the other hand, most don't find a big problem with cheating. Or if they do, that want to get married to every girl they meet. They are non-competitive. Again Disney drilled into their heads, that winning means nothing. They are both effete, and disrespectful towards women.

Part of growing up is making mistakes, enduring bullies, doing things you ought not to, it is part of life. Also to 19 we are less intelligent, I mean Einstein, Fitzgerald, Strauss, Picasso, Howard Hawks, Von Braun, FDR, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Louis Armstrong, Chandler, I know I am lumping some generations together, but the early 20th, late 19th centuries produced much greater minds than we have. We are good an computer science, and I think part of it is, it is more guided, that the purely theoretical and the arts.

We are good engineers, but I don't think we are good thinkers. Teamwork is too important to us, and we care little about prestige, and being great. Also most are very family oriented. You can see they don't care much about how they do at their job, and how far they get. To me prestige is more important than money. That could be my waspy upbringing partly, but I think it has to do with a certain cultural generational divide. We hide it cause most of us have mummy or daddy above our shoulder.

Posted by Theodore StoneNovember 26, 09 05:52 PM

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About brainiac Brainiac is the daily blog of the Globe's Sunday Ideas
section, covering news and delights from the worlds of art, science,
literature, history, design, and more. You can follow us on Twitter @GlobeIdeas.

Guest blogger Simon Waxman is Managing Editor of Boston Review and has written for WBUR, Alternet, McSweeney's, Jacobin, and others.

Guest blogger Elizabeth Manus is a writer living in New York City. She has been a book review editor at the Boston Phoenix, and a columnist for The New York Observer and Metro.

Guest blogger Sarah Laskow is a freelance writer and editor in New York City. She edits Smithsonian's SmartNews blog and has contributed to Salon, Good, The American Prospect, Bloomberg News, and other publications.

Guest blogger Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and freelance semiotician. He was the original Brainiac
blogger, and is currently editor of the blog HiLobrow, publisher of a series of
Radium Age science fiction novels, and co-author/co-editor of several books,
including the story collection "Significant Objects" and the kids'
field guide to life "Unbored."

Guest blogger Ruth Graham is a freelance journalist in
New Hampshire, and a frequent Ideas contributor. She is a former features
editor for the New York Sun, and has written for publications including Slate
and the Wall Street Journal.

Joshua Rothman is a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard English
department, and an Instructor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy
School of Government. He teaches novels and political writing.